China stuns the world

Published Aug 20, 2008 10:32 PM

Chinese athletes, children, artists and choreographers, 15,000 performers and an
abundant display of new technology since the opening of the Beijing Olympics
have stunned billions of people around the world. The transnational
imperialist-dominated media have left most people unaware of the tremendous
progress made in the world’s most populous country since the earthshaking
revolution led by Mao Zedong’s Communist Party in 1949, less than 60
years ago.

Perhaps the most shaken up were the U.S. media professionals
themselves—that’s a nice way of saying paid propagandists—who
were rendered speechless by the opening ceremony. When these pundits got their
act together, they were still reduced to nit-picking about the age of Chinese
gymnasts and some debatable decisions about lip-synching a song and
technologically enhancing some fireworks. Hollywood and U.S. television use
these techniques on a regular basis; only rarely are they made an issue.

Then there were the stories about the difficulties applying for a protest
permit in Beijing. One New York Times op-ed analyst applied for his own protest
permit. We recommend he apply for such a permit in Denver or in St. Paul in an
attempt to get close to the national conventions of the Democrats and
Republicans. Protest organizers in those cities need a team of lawyers to get
anywhere near the conventions and still face threats from tanks, tear gas,
lasers, water cannon, and rubber and lead bullets.

And the reasons for protesting here are so much more compelling, as the
conventions will be filled with war criminals like George W. Bush and Dick
Cheney, who have ordered illegal foreign occupations and destructions of entire
countries while they abandoned New Orleans’ Black population, persecuted
immigrants and destroyed the environment at home. That’s only a partial
list of their crimes.

You might think that the corporate media’s analysts would try to credit
China’s progress solely to its decision to allow in foreign investment
and private capital. These pro-capitalist hacks recognize, however, that
something else is behind the massive show of Chinese confidence. They see that
“kow-towing” to Western rulers is in the dustbin of history.

A hundred years ago, though China still had 5,000 years of civilization behind
it, foreign imperialist ruling classes with far less history but more powerful
weapons and a stronger industrial and financial base enslaved China’s
people.

It took more than technological improvements to turn this situation around. Nor
was it done through the good will of China’s foreign rulers. A revolution
lasting decades, led by the Chinese Communist Party, not only pushed out
foreign imperialist invaders and exploiters but mobilized hundreds of millions
of Chinese peasants and workers, women and men in the effort to build
socialism. This revolution turned the Chinese people into conscious actors on
the world scene, soldiers and organizers who could liberate their nation and
shake the world in 1949, just as the performers on Aug. 8 this year stunned the
billions watching on television screens.

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